Lying Next to Me

On Memorial Day weekend, Adam Warner brings his wife, Sophie, and their three-year-old daughter, Aubrey, to the Wisteria, one of three restored 1920s vacation cabins near Lilliwaup, Washington, on Hood Canal. He has planned the trip to reconnect with Sophie after a period of overwork. The next morning, Adam takes Aubrey out in a rowboat while Sophie sits on a seawall above the beach, reading and drinking chardonnay. From about 100 yards offshore, Adam hears a scream and sees a man struggling with Sophie. As he rows toward shore, his glasses fall into the water, blurring his vision. He watches the man punch Sophie and carry her behind the cabin. By the time Adam reaches the beach, Sophie has vanished. He leaves Aubrey with Teresa Dibley, a grandmother renting the neighboring cabin, and runs up a trail to the highway but finds no trace of his wife.

Mason County detectives Lee Husemann and Zach Montrose respond to the scene. Lee shares a deep personal bond with Adam: He was the best friend of her late brother, Kip, who died in Afghanistan. When Lee was 12, a man abducted and sexually assaulted her, leaving her bound in a vacant lot. Adam found her during a neighborhood search, freed her, and carried her to safety. The rescue shaped Lee's decision to become a detective, but she recognizes the bond could compromise her objectivity.

Early evidence raises doubts about Adam's account. Only one side of the bed appears slept in, with a blanket on the sofa. Montrose questions why a muscular man could not row faster and calls the lost glasses convenient. Axel Bakker, a 77-year-old neighbor walking his dog, corroborates Adam's story: He saw Sophie struggling with a man in a red or orange jacket before both vanished from view. However, Bakker's reliability is questionable, as he gives the 911 dispatcher the name of a long-dead pet rather than his current dog.

The occupants of the third cabin are Connor Moss, a waiter at a Seattle restaurant called the Blue Door, and his wife, Kristen, a lawyer who wears a distinctive platinum-and-sapphire art deco pendant. Connor has been severely hungover all day and claims to have heard nothing. He carries a felony DUI conviction from his twenties that left his cousin with a permanent brain injury. Kristen, 39, is consumed by her inability to conceive despite exhaustive medical intervention.

Sophie's parents, Frank and Helen Flynn, arrive. Frank, domineering and contemptuous of Adam, insists his son-in-law is responsible. Sophie's body surfaces the next morning at Octopus Hole, a diving site half a mile from the cabins. Forensic pathologist Dr. Tamara Collier determines Sophie died from blunt force trauma to the head, with evidence of choking and sexual assault. Toxicology reveals diphenhydramine, an antihistamine, but Sophie's stomach is empty, indicating she had not eaten for at least 12 hours. Teresa Dibley later reports finding uneaten food in the Wisteria's refrigerator, contradicting Adam's claim that the couple had dinner Friday night.

Through alternating perspectives, the narrative reveals hidden truths. Adam has long known about Sophie's infidelity, having discovered love emails between Sophie and an unnamed man on their shared computer. At Aubrey's two-year checkup, he noticed the child's blood type is AB, impossible given his O-negative blood and Sophie's type A, and concluded Aubrey is not biologically his. He traced the emails to the Blue Door and identified Connor as Sophie's lover. Connor, meanwhile, is tormented by gaps in his memory from the night at the cabin: He notices blood on his bedsheets and sand on his shoes but cannot recall what happened after arriving. Kristen privately suspects Connor may be involved but says nothing. In flashback, she reveals that she discovered Connor's affair months earlier and destroyed his phone rather than confront him, resolving to keep him as her means to conceive while harboring rage.

The investigation initially pursues Jim Coyle, a registered sex offender living nearby, but his alibi is verified and he is later found dead by suicide. The breakthrough comes when DNA collected from Sophie's body matches Connor, identified through a sample taken during his California DUI arrest. Detectives arrest Connor at his Seattle home. Kristen promises to help but privately insists he plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Connor receives life without parole. Kristen files for divorce and tells the media that Connor stalked Sophie to the cabins.

Weeks later, Adam invites Lee to the Wisteria to scatter Sophie's ashes. During the visit, Lee notices a small panel in the cabin's sauna. Two subsequent revelations unsettle her. Lee learns that Adam consulted Dan Belding Jr., a Shelton lawyer, about placing Aubrey for private adoption, fabricating allegations that Sophie's father had molested Sophie to exclude her parents. Then Connor writes Lee from prison insisting on his innocence. He tells Lee that Sophie ended their affair when she became pregnant, wanting to save her marriage, and that he was drugged the night of the murder. He also mentions that the crab fishery was closed that weekend, with a notice posted in each cabin's boat. Lee realizes Adam went crabbing despite the closure, and his beached boat contained no crab pots.

Lee returns to the cabins and opens the panel. Behind it, steps lead to a dirt-floored space containing Sophie's straw hat and dried blood. A passageway, a remnant of Prohibition-era rumrunning tunnels, connects all three cabins and exits to Hood Canal. The tunnel provides the means to move Sophie's body unseen.

Lee drives to Adam's Seattle home, where she spots—on his table—the platinum-and-sapphire art deco pendant she had noticed Kristen wearing during their initial interview, revealing their relationship. She texts Montrose to send police, then confronts Adam. Kristen arrives with a gun, and the conspirators begin blaming each other. The full plot emerges: Months before the murder, Kristen comes to Adam's door to confront him about Sophie and Connor's affair, declaring she wants both of them gone. Together they devise a plan. Adam drugs Sophie with GHB, a powerful sedative, the night before the staged abduction and brings her unconscious body to a space beneath the cabin, where Kristen beats her to death. They dress a blow-up sex doll in Sophie's clothes and hat, and Kristen, wearing Connor's red jacket and a synthetic wig, stages a struggle visible from the beach, timed to coincide with Bakker's daily walk. Kristen plants Connor's semen, obtained from a fertility-collection kit, inside Sophie's body to frame him, having also drugged Connor with GHB so he would have no memory.

Kristen's motive combines revenge with her obsessive desire to adopt Aubrey through a relationship with Adam. Adam's motive is rage over Sophie's betrayal. Kristen shoots Adam in the chest; Lee draws her weapon and kills Kristen. Adam survives and is charged with murder after a second toxicology review reveals GHB in Sophie's system. Kristen's autopsy reveals she was born without ovaries, a condition called ovarian agenesis, meaning she could never have conceived; her supposed fertility doctor was a psychiatrist. A paternity test confirms Aubrey is Connor's biological daughter, and Connor's guilty plea is being unwound. Lee reflects on how the bond she felt with Adam was built on a distorted version of who he truly was.